If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Calvino's dazzling post-modernist masterpiece combines a love story, a detective story and a sardonic dissection of the publishing industry in a scintillating allegory of reading. Based on a witty analogy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, If on a Winter's Night is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of same book - If on a Winter's Night by Italo Calvino - are constantly and comically frustrated. The Arabian Nights of our day.